118
The central processor is cocooned in a web of soft polystyrene and cooled by a steady flow of near-freezing air. You play your blaster's beam across the free-floating oil-discs which you guess control the working memory of the mining droid's electronic brain. The mining operation shuts down immediately. You carry on past the processor into another cavernous space lit dimly by the light of a furnace. It is a refining plant and the Polybdenum ore is being fed in at one end and the lumps of reddish rock emerge at the other in the form of sleek rods, usable in the Variac Drive of a Time Machine. Beyond the refinery is the back end of the armadillo-like mining droid, where a conveyor belt moves the rods onto a plasteel rack. Swooping towards you up the ramp at the back are two wardroids. Carborundum lurches forward, colliding with one. The twenty tons of rock which is the Thrix severely dents the droid. It stops and sinks to the ground but is about to launch a missile at Carborundum. The second droid is targeting its laser cannon at you. Will you:
Blast the wardroid that is aiming at you? | Turn to 146 |
Try to save Carborundum's life? | Turn to 129 |